The British Cross

by Bill Granger

  “Certainly, Mr. Wickham.” The accent was harsh, Slavic. “We know who you are very well.”

  And the other man smiled.

  3

  AMSTERDAM

  The two men sat at the curving end of the little bar off the lobby inside the Victoria Hotel. Beyond the windows, the storm that had blown in from the North Sea that morning was now ebbing with the afternoon light. Along Damrak, the street that separated the hotel from the canal, the snow had pushed into little mountains of slush. The red streetcars were silenced by the snowfall and moved dreamlike along the bright, straight tracks. There were no boats in the canal and the streets were empty.

  “What is the business?”

  “In a little, Antonio.” The second man was round and pleasant like a Rubens cavalier. In fact, he was not Dutch but a Bulgarian in charge of the obscure Bulgarian travel service in Amsterdam, where hardly anyone ever wanted to go to Bulgaria on holiday. It did not matter. He had other jobs.

  “If we have so much time, why did I have to run like hell from Paris all the way up here? In a goddamn snowstorm.”

  “The express train was late.”

  “Obviously.”

  The first man drank more Heineken from his heavy tulip-shaped glass. He was as unpleasant in appearance as he was in tone of voice. His face was dark and his cheeks were hollow. He had black eyes set deeply into his dark features. Nothing in his appearance spoke of aggression or prominence—Antonio had a weak chin and his lips were thin. Yet it was not a weak face, merely one of stony silence and of secrets.

  “The job, Penev.”

  “Have another drink.”

  “What is the job?”

  “It’s a complicated business, comrade.”

  The implied familiarity of “comrade” annoyed Antonio but he said nothing. He rapped on the bar with the stem of the glass to summon the bartender, who was in another room. The windows of the bar rattled in the wind.

  “I can take care of it.”

  “That’s why we sent for you.”

  Antonio smiled. “Something kinky in it?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps it will be in time.”

  “Where’s the damned barman?” Antonio rapped the glass on the wood again. He was called Antonio but that was not his name. He had once been baptized and given a name that had been placed on a parish register in the city of Reggio Calabria, where he had been born. But that book had long been stolen and the name had been expunged from the Italian records kept in Rome and now he was Antonio to all who dealt with him. A sweet name, one of his girls had said. Like the sweet smell of flowers at funeral.

  The bartender—short and dark and sullen—appeared in a doorway and again Antonio rapped his glass on the wood. The bartender made a face and walked slowly behind the counter.

  “Do you want another?” he asked in Dutch, though both men had been speaking English.

  Penev glanced up sharply, understood the reprimand in the change of language, and replied in Dutch.

  “Another then,” the barman said to Antonio, switching back to English.

  “What do you think I want in a place like this? Unless you have girls.”

  “That is rude,” the Dutchman said with typical Amsterdam bluntness. For a moment, Antonio merely stared at him as though he were a gray mouse who had blundered into a warm room. Antonio’s black eyes chilled. The barman turned away, picked up a green bottle beneath the counter, placed it on the bar and opened it. He stared back at Antonio.

  “What are you waiting for? A tip? Just put it on my bill.”

  In a moment, they were in the room alone again.

  “What is the business then, Penev?”

  “Two matters, one simple, the other more complicated.”

  “Where?”

  “The first hit is in Dublin. In the next two days. Definitely before Thursday. Do you understand?”

  “How does it happen?”

  “Accident. If possible. Very much an accident.” The Rubens figure of Penev smacked his lips over a gin-and-tonic in front of him. He sipped. “The target is not a player, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “And the other?”

  “Very much a player. In Helsinki. You do the Dublin business first and then Helsinki.”

  “You couldn’t have picked someplace warm, could you?”

  Penev did not smile. Despite his girth and external pleasantness, he had no sense of irony or sarcasm. He was a station agent for the Bulgarian Secret Police (External), and the principal northern European contractor for special jobs that called for freelance help. Antonio was a freelance assassin and terrorist who had proved reliable in other matters. The Bulgarian Secret Police was the choice assassination tool used by the Soviet Committee for State Security, the KGB.

  “Are the matters linked?”

  “That is my understanding, but I have not been told too much. It is not necessary for you to know too much.”

  “I’ll decide that, Penev,” Antonio said. “What is the Dublin target?”

  “Nonplayer. A priest. About seventy years old. Everything is in the file.”

  “How do I kill him?”

  “The method is yours. There won’t be enough time to set up anything elaborate. The umbrella trick might be—”

  “No. I don’t want to get that close. I’ll think of something.”

  “The player in Helsinki…”

  “Good. What about him?”

  “Make that any way you want.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Middle-aged. Professional player.”

  “Not on contract?”

  “An organization man.” Penev sipped again at the gin.

  “I could cut off his balls and put them in his mouth.” Antonio smiled and Penev blanched. “I did that once in Marseilles. Not your business then. I was hitting for the Mafia; they wanted to kill an informer. It’s slang, you don’t understand, but it would be hard to translate. The bird sings, the informer sings. Well, the worst part was finding the bird. They wanted it done fast and I said, ‘Well, I don’t have the time to go and get a bird and kill it and then keep it around just to put in this guy’s mouth when I hit him.’ So I thought I’d just put his balls in his mouth. It worked out.”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Well, I could just garrote him. Or do a cutting.”

  “I do not need to know the details.”

  “At the embassy?”

  “No. Presidentti Hotel. His photograph is in the second envelope. When you’re finished going over the material, get rid of them.”

  “Of course.”

  “Standard contract—”

  “Expenses.”

  “Yes. The whole thing should not take more than a week.”

  Again, the windows rattled in reminder of the storm still beating outside. The city seemed poised between light and dark. In a little while, in the tangle of streets near the Nieuwmarkt and off the Zeedijk across the canal from the old Victoria, the whores would be waking up and having their meager breakfasts in small, drafty rooms, explaining matters to their pimps and protectors. The bars would be open, waiting for the girls of the district—and the boys who served the same purposes for some—and for the customers, culled from half-a-hundred countries, who knew what they wanted to buy in Amsterdam. For all its culture and art museums, it was still the old port city on a hard, gray, perpetually angry sea where the sailors had always taken their pleasures roughly. A sort of bitter melancholy lingered in the city, frozen between the maritime past of great Dutch empires and the empty present of life in a beautiful city that had lost its sense of joy beyond existing another night in the red-light districts, beyond surviving a few small pleasures of purchased touch, warmth, whispers.

  “Why is it connected?”

  “Why do you want to know, Antonio?”

  “Because it’s my skin, isn’t it? Because I’ve played you fair in the past but I don’t always trust you, you know?”

  Penev did not speak.

&nbs
p; “The Turk did the hit on the pope for your people—”

  “That is not proven.”

  “And I’m not a lawyer.” Antonio sneered. “I wouldn’t have taken a job like that.”

  “Would you be afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of your soul?” Penev smiled.

  “What? To kill a pope? That wouldn’t mean much. It was done all wrong. The Turk was a fool to trap himself in St. Peter’s Square. And I wouldn’t have trusted you people. Not on a hit that was so large. You were going to kill him if he escaped.”

  “We keep our word.”

  “A Bulgarian has no honor.”

  “And you? What are you?”

  “How is this connected?”

  “There won’t be any problem in Dublin. If it works out, you might have to go back to Ireland in two weeks to finish… some matters.”

  “And I don’t see why you don’t take care of the Helsinki business yourself. You must have a hundred Soviet agents in that city.”

  “I have my orders. We want an independent contract with a freelance.”

  “All right.” Antonio took the two envelopes from the counter and shoved them in the pocket of his black coat. He drained the last of the beer. “Penev, I want a woman tonight. Arrange it.”

  “I’m not a pimp—”

  “Don’t tell me what you are.”

  “You could go too far.”

  “I have gone too far. Don’t warn me. Not ever. You can send one of your agents if she’s not ugly. I won’t tell her any secrets.” Antonio smiled and got up from his barstool. “I might want to hurt her a bit, but she’ll be all right.”

  “What kind of a man are you?”

  “I told you in Paris I wanted some cocaine. I’ve had problems getting—”

  “Yes. It’s in the first envelope. I’m not a pimp—”

  “I know exactly what you are; you are just like me, Penev.” Antonio slipped both hands into his pockets. “I’m tired. The train was late. I want to take a little nap now. Send up a woman, you know the room. Someone young. Not one of your old Bulgarian sows. Tell her it will be for all night, okay?”

  4

  LONDON

  Ely paused a moment before he trudged up the worn stone steps to the entrance of the Georgian graystone at the far side of the square off Pall Mall. There were just seven stone steps to the glass door but the effort to mount them always seemed to the agent to be out of proportion to the task.

  He climbed the stairs heavily and rang the bell. A buzzer sounded and he pushed the locked door and was in a cold entry hall, which was covered with a soiled red carpet. At the end of the dim hall was a young man behind a standard wooden government-issue desk. He looked like every hotel clerk Ely had ever known.

  He glanced up and Ely produced the required bit of plastic with his photograph embalmed on a card. Ely. How long had he been Ely? What was his name, anyway?

  He smiled at the earnest young man who gave the card careful scrutiny before returning it. Ely had once been Gemstone and before that 0047 in the early days when the service decreed everyone in Auntie had a number. But it wasn’t even called Auntie then, was it? Codes on codes, names on names, and the identity of all men is buried beneath the rubble of their own histories.

  “The identity of all men is buried beneath the rubble of their own histories,” Ely said to the clerk.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. Doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re to get a new card at the end of the month, sir.”

  “More security? Or merely to keep the printers employed?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “No. I suppose you couldn’t. Perhaps none of us could.”

  Silence. Ely felt saddened but he had been a part of sadness for so long that there was something familiar about it, like an old friend who drinks too much or talks too much or insists on reciting poetry at awkward moments; an old friend such as Ely would be if he could afford the trivial nature of friendships.

  “I’m supposed to see Q this morning.”

  “Should I ring you up?”

  “I know the way.”

  “You can’t take the lift, I’m afraid, it’s out of repair.”

  “Of course,” Ely said gently. “Or it would be a work-to-rule job action by the lift operators. Or perhaps a new measure to cut government costs.”

  The clerk nodded again absently like a hotel clerk who cannot pay attention to the foreign guest.

  Ely sighed and went to the stairs. They were covered with the same hideous red carpet that covered the worn floor in the front hall. The building was very old and in need of repair; the ceiling in Files leaked, for example, something Ely had discovered on his first day in the assignment. Poor old England, he had thought then.

  Poor old England, he thought now, stepping on the first step, pulling himself up to the second, to the third, to the fourth.…

  Q was on the fourth floor in the second building. All the buildings on the south side of the little square off Pall Mall were attached and walls had been opened between them. So the establishment of Auntie was quite large, though it appeared deceptively small at first.

  Ely paused for breath at the second landing.

  He had thin hands that gripped the oak banisters with casual strength. He was nearly fifty, which was very old for an agent still in the field, very old for an agent who yearned to stay in the field. His shoulders drooped and his face had a wasted look, as though he had recently undergone surgery. His youthful vanity was maintained in the bright ginger mustache with fierce Guardsman’s curls that belied the stricken look of his face. Something mocking was always present in his blue, clear eyes. His voice was reedy and some would mistake him, in appearance and speech, for a beloved Mr. Chips of a professor.

  In fact, he was called the Fixer inside the upper ranks of Auntie. He fixed things that were broken. He put the pieces back together. Should that be in the past tense? He had been a fixer. Sometimes, when he killed, the job description was strained to match the event. Ely would have said that a fixer who has to kill in the end has merely failed. Perhaps that explained it; he had merely failed.

  “He’s expecting you.” The women was not yet twenty-five and Ely noticed that she had already begun to ruin her once-fair English country complexion with hideous amounts of cheap makeup in the current style. Her name was Mary and she was not terribly bright, a quality that suited Q, who did not believe in surrounding himself with bright and ambitious people. “I want people who will do as they’re told,” he once said to Ely in pointed reference. Ely knew exactly what Q would like from him.

  “Thank you, Mary.” Politely, without emphasis, gently; the old, honored employee showing courtesy in the course of a day’s work.

  “Good morning,” he said when he entered the room.

  In fact, it was not. Blustery winter banged at the windows. There was rain in the gray, brooding clouds covering the old city. The room was chill—all the rooms inside Auntie were too cold or too hot or leaky or carried some permanent defect—and Q had a small gas fire blazing in a corner. He sat very near the fire behind a Queen Anne–period desk. There was one other chair in the bare room and it was in front of the desk and away from the fire. It was not pleasant, on a cold day, to be interviewed by Q.

  “Take a pew,” Q said.

  Ely sat down.

  “We need a fixer,” Q said.

  Ely was surprised. He had botched the matter two years before in Vienna, botched it badly. Tompkins, who was Q’s Number One, had gotten him off the hook but not without cost. Tompkins had pulled him back to headquarters and put him under Miss Marple in Record Retrieval. It was a purgatory but at least it was not expulsion. Tompkins had been his friend; Tompkins had explained that Ely had botched the matter because of bad luck. Ely knew that it was a lie, even if Tompkins did not. Ely had failed because his nerve had failed. He had dishonored himself for the first time. He had failed to act when an action would have
saved the business. Not to mention the lives of six people.

  He showed no emotion as he listened to Q.

  “Two days ago, one of our men in Cheltenham disappeared.”

  Ely did not speak. He saw the purgatory opening. He was going back. And yet he still felt the chill of his failure in Austria two years before.

  “He was working on Special Section. I don’t have to go into the thing too deeply, the Section I mean. But he had made an inquiry to Seeker before he disappeared. Strange inquiry, it seems.” Q was wearing a gray cardigan sweater. He had intense blue eyes and was clean-shaven. His white hair was parted in the middle in an old-fashioned cut. His eyes were framed by rimless glasses. There was something so cold about the man that Ely felt the chill of the room was more than an accident of the season.

  “I don’t know what Seeker is, sir.”

  “Really? I thought you had been cleared—”

  “Perhaps I have but I haven’t had training in it.”

  “Well, this damned security really turns on itself, doesn’t it? We begin by not trusting the enemy, work our way to not trusting the Americans, and now we don’t trust ourselves.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ely agreed quietly because it seemed agreement was called for. He rarely understood what the Old Man was saying when he entered into a flight of philosophy.

  “Seeker is the highest-level record keeper. Computer. Been on-line, as they say, for two years, goes all the way back now to Crimea… really marvelous, space efficient…”

  “Yes.”

  “Name of Wickham.”

  “Who, sir?”

  Q frowned. He was annoyed. “Damn it. The man who disappeared.”

  “But what was his inquiry?”

  “Tomas Crohan. Wanted to know what we had on Tomas Crohan.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t explain. He talked to George but George thought he was lying. George was going to get to the bottom of it when he disappeared. That very night. Chauffeur came along to pick him up at the usual time and he wasn’t there. Chauffeur waited for an hour, called his wife, great hue and cry, and that’s all we know.”